How do you design a garden?

Good garden design is all about planning. Garden Designers start by completing a land and levels survey. They then consider the practical requirements of the finished garden design before trying to fit them together into a cohesive and beautiful design.

Some questions to ask yourself when beginning to design a garden:

• Who will use the garden?

• When will the garden be used? i.e. mainly evenings and weekends

• What is the garden to be used for? entertaining, relaxing, playground
  

• What is the budget?

• What is the aspect of the garden? cold, north facing or sunny south-west facing

• What type of soil does the garden have?

• Are you in a frost pocket?

• Do any of the gardens users suffer from hayfever?

• How many hours a week will be spent maintaining the garden?

Some people like to design a garden using a series of interlocking shapes so that is looks a bit like an abstract painting. They then assign materials to the shapes. For example, one square might become a lawn whilst the adjacent blocks become generous planting beds or a path.

Most garden designers use a simple pencil and paper on a grid (graph paper is fine!) to draw their new designs to scale. A good scale is 1:50 (that is 1 cm for every 50cm) or 1:100 (that is 1cm for every 1m)

Other designers prefer to launch straight into 3 dimensions and design using sketch up or modelling clay that they then transfer back into 2 dimensions.

SMALL URBAN GARDEN DESIGN TIPS

When you are designing a small urban garden, privacy will often be a real concern. Deal with this by creating planted screens of by using pleached hedges on the boundary - and by redirecting and capturing attention within the garden by the use of focal points such as a specimen plants or water feature.

You may also like to consider including a pergola trained with climbers or garden canopy to give you privacy from above. Water features can be very useful in noisy gardens as they can help to drown out the sound of neighbours and traffic.

Straight lines often work best in small gardens as they reflect the geometry of the architecture and make the garden feel like part of the house, almost like an 'outdoor room'.

LARGE COUNTRY GARDEN DESIGN TIPS

When you are designing larger gardens or gardens in the countryside, you will need to make sure the garden links the built environment of the house with the rural landscape beyond. Start with straight lines and geometric shapes close to the house before moving into more fluid semi-circles and curves. Think about using hedges and evergreen shrubs to create a permanent structure to the garden throughout the year and make sure to include pergolas, walkways or trees in the vertical plane.

When I start to design a garden, I first design the hard landscaping to create a map of the new garden and then add in the evergreen plants, hedges and shrubs so that I have a winter skeleton that I am happy with.

Once these are in place, I can begin to decide on materials that will complement the property, such as reclaimed brick walls, york stone paving - as well as benches, ornaments and lighting.

Once these are clear in my mind, I then design the planting for the garden - using decidous plants, sub shrubs and perennials to fill in the gaps

However you choose to design your garden, remember that a little thought planning the new garden can save you both time and money!

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